Showing vs. Telling: Don’t Assume Showing Is Better

In the writing world, we often hear the advice to show, don’t tell. Worded like that—with a “don’t” admonition—we can easily assume it’s a writing “rule,” or that showing is better than telling.

However, as I’ve mentioned many times before, telling isn’t bad or something to be avoided at all costs. In fact, our stories need telling.

I was reminded of the problems with the usual assumptions by an older-but-fantastic post by Cecilia Tan that I recently came across. Her insights added a whole new layer to why advice to show, don’t tell doesn’t work and, in fact, can be downright harmful.

Before I get into sharing her insights, let’s do a quick recap…

The Usual Assumption: Too Much Telling & Not Enough Showing

Most articles that advise us to show, show, show come from the assumption that we’re not showing enough in our story, and that we’re instead telling too much. That is often the case, especially for new writers.

When it comes to new writers…

New writers often find it easier to tell than to show. Showing what emotions look and feel like takes a lot more effort. Flat descriptions of setting are easier than deep point-of-view (POV) insights from our characters. Actions are easier to describe in straightforward narrative than it is to include all the senses. Etc., etc.

Much of children’s literature is written with more tell than show, and the deep POV style of modern fiction—which tends to go hand-in-hand with showing—is a fairly recent trend in the literary world. That means for many of us, we have more experience with stories that tell than with those that show.

Because of those two issues above, telling tends to come somewhat naturally and often doesn’t need to be taught beyond school-age lessons. In contrast, showing is a specific skill that writers generally won’t know how to do until they learn from concrete instruction.

However, once we learn how to show, that assumption of too-much-tell-not-enough-show doesn’t ring nearly as true. Instead, after we learn that skill, we might even go overboard and fail to tell as much as our story needs.

Or in deep POV, virtually all our character’s thoughts are technically telling. Thoughts can’t be shown quite the same way other writing elements can be. And I’d bet most of us have read stories where we reached one conclusion (from being shown something), and we’re told to accept a different conclusion by the character’s thoughts (from being told something).

Context Is Critical for Readers

While story questions are good, confusion is bad. Often goals, motivations, stakes, or other important story aspects need to be brought out of the subtext of showing and at least hinted at to readers more directly, or else they won’t understand the fundamental elements of the story.

But there’s another aspect of context to consider: worldbuilding.

While we might thinking of worldbuilding in reference to fantasy or science fiction stories, in truth, almost all stories have elements of worldbuilding. Our story world includes not just the settings and props, but also our character’s situation.

Are they a single parent struggling to keep their job and stable childcare?

Are they a reckless teenager trying to find their way after experiencing rejection by their parent?

Are they a new shapeshifter scared by their transformation and experiencing very different sensations for the first time?

worldbuilding with cultures—#ownvoices stories, Deep South vs. New York stories, non-U.S.-based stories, etc.

Not only is telling necessary for worldbuilding of all types, but worldbuilding also increases story immersion, which is the opposite effect we usually expect from telling.

Worldbuilding helps carry us away from our reading experience. We’re no longer sitting in a doctor’s office, staring at our ereader. We’re on a journey with the characters, fully immersed in the story.

Most stories include worldbuilding. Worldbuilding details are often telling. Worldbuilding is good for story immersion. Therefore telling is not inherently bad for our stories or automatically a sign of bad writing.

As we’re all exposed to the typical situations of straight white males through all types of pop culture, we often don’t need extra information to give context to their story situations. But as listed in the worldbuilding types above, the cultural aspect of non-white-male stories usually requires worldbuilding.

As Cecilia says:

“The power to “show, not tell” stemmed from the writing for an audience that shared so many assumptions with them that the audience would feel that those settings and stories were “universal.” …

Look at the literary fiction techniques that are supposedly the hallmarks of good writing: nearly all of them rely not on what was said, but on what is left unsaid. Always come at things sideways; don’t be too direct, too pat, or too slick. … Make allusions and references to the works of the literary canon, the Bible, and familiar events of history to add a layer of evocation… These are the do’s and don’ts of MFA programs everywhere. They rely on a shared pool of knowledge and cultural assumptions so that the words left unsaid are powerfully communicated.

The inverse is also true, then: writing about any experience that is “foreign” to that body of shared knowledge is too often deemed less worthy because to make it understandable to the mainstream takes a lot of explanation. Which we’ve been taught is bad writing!”

Know When to Ignore the Advice

Stories from historically marginalized populations don’t fit the “universal” MFA-ideal simply because the generic reader doesn’t have the necessary background information to understand the meaning or importance of situations. Not everything can (or should) be expressed in subtext or allusions for most genre stories, much less those with elements from a diverse population.

In other words, the advice of show, don’t tell is inappropriate for stories that need worldbuilding. And as that description applies to not just stories with cultural aspects beyond the U.S. or straight-white-male experience, but all genre fiction, any advice that automatically assumes telling is bad writing or “less than” showing is borderline offensive for being blind to its inherent privilege.

It’s not a “bad” thing to show whenever we can. We usually need to show characters’ emotional journeys for it to feel “real” to readers, and we need to show points of change, which in genre stories, will be the majority of the text. But as with virtually all advice, it’s just as important to know when to ignore the “rules” as it is to understand them. *smile*

How often have you heard the advice to show, don’t tell? Did you think that good advice? Do you agree that the advice implies that showing is better than telling? Did you ever think about how the advice doesn’t apply to stories with worldbuilding? Did you come away with other insights from Cecilia’s post?

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What a great post!! I’d never thought about it that way before. I write in deep POV, and I always struggle with when to tell/summarize something because of the amount of space it takes to do deep POV. And I write middle grade, so word count is important. (I cheat because my readers LIKE to read, but I still don’t want to go over 100k)

Anymore, for me, the advice to ‘show don’t tell’ is down there with ‘write what you know’ as being questionable advice. If we only wrote what we know in the strict sense that some take it, we’d have no genre fiction at all. I much more like the advice to ‘write what you feel’ in other words tap into the universal experience of emotion and the things that give us the most emotional points in our lives. That works for all genres.

I had never thought about ‘show don’t tell’ coming from a place of privilege but it makes so much sense. Assuming everyone’s life experience is like our own is not a good look for a writer.

I guess because I grew up reading great genre fiction when I try to read modern literary fiction I found it dry, emotionless and am often bored to tears. I’ve quit trying to read it. I’m a genre snob ^_^

That’s a great point about the “write what you know” advice. You’re right about how the emotional aspects of stories are far more universal than settings or situations anyway. For me, as a genre girl who needs to do research to include all that necessary worldbuilding, I often think of it as “write what you want to learn about or dig into.” 😀 Thanks for sharing that insight!

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6 months ago

Clare O'Beara

Thanks, we do need both.
I find in children’s books, all telling comes across as lectures from adults and makes for remarkably boring reading. Sometimes you need to show what can go wrong.

Very true! While stories might need some telling of the stakes to make sure they’re clear to readers, we also need to show those consequences for them to feel real. We need a balance, which is why the “show don’t tell” advice can do more harm than good. Thanks for sharing! 🙂

Hey Jami, Wow, I had NEVER thought of the point that “showing” implies cultural knowledge, and that this knowledge implies characters from a privileged background. But it’s true! Plus, not all readers have the “expected cultural background” to understand the subtext. To give an example, a friend of mine who did not grow up in a Western country, had never heard of Lady and the Tramp, a classic Disney movie!!!! So you really can’t make assumptions about the reader’s knowledge. Maybe the Lady and the Tramp example doesn’t seem significant, but I do understand how having or not having a sufficient cultural exposure, can hamper your ability to “automatically understand” some implied messages. I can understand North American humor pretty easily, because I was exposed to Western culture most of my life. Even when I lived in Hong Kong, I was almost always in an international school, where many classmates were from Western countries, and most of my teachers were British. In contrast, when I go to some local Hong Kong group (e.g. some church class), I have trouble understanding many of their jokes, because I lack experience in the local Hong Kong culture. There are certain social scripts that you’re “supposed to know”, because the society/ country you grew up in, keeps bombarding you with these scripts. People who grew up mostly in a different country may not have absorbed these social messages. While we’re talking about privilege, I’ve been reading a book about a guy on the autism… — Read More »

Oh, very true about international readers or the autism spectrum. I recently finished reading The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang. It’s an excellent autism-spectrum #ownvoices romance — a gender-flipped Pretty Woman premise — and the heroine struggles so much with understanding what’s expected of her, as the subtle approach doesn’t work with her.

Due to the characters, that book approached the showing/telling issue in a unique way. It would show the character interactions so readers able to follow along were able to get the meaning, but then the heroine would often misunderstand, and the hero would have to spell things out for her. It was all in character to both tell and show. Very cool and interesting. 😀

Ooh, I just added that book to my wish-list. 😀 Awesome that the hero is part Vietnamese. Reminds me of one of my main crushes, who is a very handsome Vietnamese trans boy. 🙂 That’s awesome that there’s both showing and telling!

On a different note, I think I should show less and tell more, because my dialogue scenes are way too long. It would be much better to summarize large chunks of it rather than showing readers every single bit of their conversations. XD